Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Great Absence’ Review: A Mystery of Disappearance

    A skillfully directed Japanese mystery dips into the strangeness of dementia for those who stand by and watch.We tend to think of absence as lack, and, in a literal sense, it is. But absence can be as real and looming as presence. Someone’s absence, after all, implies that they once were there — and so we feel the emptiness, whether we’re glad or in mourning.The notion of a weighty emptiness hovers over “Great Absence,” a moving drama from the director Kei Chika-ura, who wrote the screenplay with Keita Kumano. This is a film about dementia, a topic filmmakers keep tangling with, probably because extended life spans mean that more of us experience these conditions in aging family members, or our own. Chika-ura interprets dementia as a gradual, spreading absence, a sense that something once lodged in the brain — the mechanics of how to answer a phone, or the knowledge of where you are physically — has disappeared, leaving behind a vacuum. Yet for the characters in “Great Absence,” the feeling of longing for something that once existed goes far beyond a memory loss condition.Absence has structured the life of Takashi (Mirai Moriyama), an actor in Tokyo whose father, Yohji, left him and his mother when Takashi was small. He’s barely seen his father in the intervening years, only having a general sense of where he lives and what he’s up to. Yet one day, he gets a call to go to Yohji’s house, and brings his wife, Yuki (Yoko Maki). Yohji, it transpires, has been taken to a care facility. What Takashi finds in his father’s house is worrying, notes stuck to all surfaces with instructions for performing simple actions.What he doesn’t find there is Naomi (Hideko Hara), the woman for whom Yohji left his family decades earlier. Yohji doesn’t seem to have any idea where she is, telling conflicting stories. This is no surprise: Yohji doesn’t even know where he is. It’s clear he’s been in decline for a long time.The story of “Great Absence” is something of a mystery, as structured quite magnificently by Kumano and Chika-ura, directing only his second feature. The film moves freely between timelines, marked largely by Yohji’s lucidity and Naomi’s presence. Small clues dropped early in the film later help fill in the story as if they’re brush strokes, the full picture of this family’s painful absences emerging only near the end. Furthermore, Yutaka Yamazaki, the film’s revered director of photography, shot it on 35 mm film, which gives “Great Absence” a grainy, weighty feeling, as if we’re peeking into some past memory. To follow it all requires close attention, but it’s an attention that’s rewarded.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Dave Loggins, Who Wrote Hits for Himself and Others, Dies at 76

    After tasting fame with “Please Come to Boston” in 1974, he became a major Nashville songwriter. He also wrote the theme to the Masters golf tournament.Dave Loggins, a chart-topping Nashville songwriter for the likes of Kenny Rogers and the Oak Ridge Boys who also notched his own Top 10 pop hit with the wistful “Please Come to Boston” and wrote the enduring theme for the Masters golf tournament, died on July 10 in Nashville. He was 76.His death, in a hospice facility, was confirmed by his son Kyle, who did not specify the cause.Mr. Loggins, a second cousin of the pop star Kenny Loggins, released five albums as a solo artist in the 1970s, but he scored only one hit single himself.“Please Come to Boston,” a soft-rock weeper about a rambling man trying to woo a lover to follow him as he chases his dreams in one city after another, climbed to No. 1 on Billboard’s easy listening chart and No. 5 on the magazine’s Hot 100 in 1974. It was nominated for a Grammy Award for best pop vocal performance by a male artist — the first of Mr. Loggins’s four Grammy nominations.For Mr. Loggins, the song almost seemed to have divine origins. In a 2021 interview with the singer-songwriter and vocal coach Judy Rodman on the podcast “All Things Vocal,” he said he wrote the song early in his career “with chords I had never even played before.”“There was this beautiful, glowing feeling that came over me,” he added, “a godlike feeling, that said, ‘Here, go ahead and play, I’ll move your fingers.’”While “Please Come to Boston” was his only mainstream hit, Mr. Loggins was considered anything but a one-hit wonder in country music circles: He wrote hits for Willie Nelson, Tanya Tucker, Wynonna Judd and Toby Keith, among others.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Popcast (Deluxe): Ranking Every Taylor Swift Album, Worst to Best

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes a conversation about Taylor Swift’s full catalog of albums so far, ranked worst to best. Caramanica and Coscarelli, longtime chroniclers of Swift’s career, each deliver their personal list of favorites — and least favorites — from her 11 original studio releases: “Taylor Swift,” “Fearless,” “Speak Now,” “Red,” “1989,” “Reputation,” “Lover,” “folklore,” “evermore,” “Midnights” and “The Tortured Poets Department.”Connect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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    Why Donald Glover Is Saying Goodbye to Childish Gambino

    “Bando Stone & the New World,” his new album due Friday, tells a story about the potential end of the world — and the conclusion of his pseudonymous musical project.Donald Glover had been walking a New York City street only a moment when a young man, perhaps in his early 20s, called out to him from several yards away.“Yo, Donald Glover, bro, I love you, man!”Glover nodded and said thank you.“I listen to Childish Gambino like every day,” he continued.“I appreciate it,” Glover replied.“You’re seriously my favorite, bro,” the man shouted, seemingly struggling for something else to say. Finally, he added, “Since I was a little kid!”Glover chuckled to himself. “A ‘little kid’?” he said, after a beat. “That doesn’t make me feel old, I just know that I am old.”Time comes for everyone. It has mostly been kind to Glover, the multiple Emmy- and Grammy-winning actor, musician, writer and director, who turned 40 last September. He has been in the public eye for nearly 20 years, since his college sketch comedy troupe, Derrick, found an audience on early YouTube in 2006. And he has been famous for 15, since starring in the hit NBC comedy series “Community.”Childish Gambino, his rap alter ego, caught the attention of the hip-hop blogosphere in 2010, making it old enough to be sent off to high school. And now, after the release of his sixth album, “Bando Stone & the New World,” on Friday, he’s officially retiring the moniker.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Rust’ Armorer Asks for New Trial After Dismissal of Alec Baldwin’s Case

    Lawyers for the armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, are seizing on a judge’s dramatic dismissal of the actor’s case to argue for her release from prison.The armorer who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for loading a live round into a gun on the “Rust” movie set, resulting in the fatal shooting of its cinematographer, asked a court in New Mexico on Tuesday for a new trial following the collapse of the case against Alec Baldwin.On Friday, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer halted Mr. Baldwin’s manslaughter trial and dismissed the case against him permanently after determining that the state had intentionally withheld new evidence that could have shed light on how live rounds ended up on the movie set, leading to the death of the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins.Now lawyers for the armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, whose case was handled by the same prosecutor and who was sentenced to 18 months in prison by the same judge, are seizing on the problems exposed during Mr. Baldwin’s case to seek a new trial.“This court stated on July 12 that the integrity of the judicial system demanded that the court dismiss Mr. Baldwin’s case with prejudice,” the lawyers wrote. “How can it be any different with Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s case, with this proven litany of serious discovery abuses?”The dramatic dismissal of the case against Mr. Baldwin followed a hearing in which the judge herself examined the new evidence in the Santa Fe County District Courthouse: a batch of live rounds that someone had dropped off to the local sheriff’s office around the time the armorer’s trial ended in March.Law enforcement officials acknowledged during testimony that when the ammunition was turned in, it was put in a separate case file from the rest of the “Rust” evidence. Mr. Baldwin’s lawyers said they had never received it despite asking the state for all ballistics evidence.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘My Spy the Eternal City’ Review: An Explosive Roman Holiday

    The sequel stars a teenage Sophie (Chloe Coleman), who goes on a school trip to Italy with J.J. (Dave Bautista) as her burly chaperone.Watching the new teen comedy “My Spy the Eternal City,” the attentive viewer may begin to wonder about the role of Anna Faris. The endlessly inventive performer spends the first half of the movie smothering the light of her comedic virtuosity under a bushel of a part as a humorless high school principal.It turns out there’s a legitimate and mildly amusing plot-twist rationale, since the film has bigger aims. Directed by the screen comedy veteran Peter Segal (“The Naked Gun 33 ⅓: The Final Insult,” “Get Smart”), the movie is a sequel to the 2020 film “My Spy,” in which J.J., a C.I.A. operative played by the brawny Dave Bautista, had to protect a girl named Sophie (Chloe Coleman) and winds up as her stepdad.In the sequel, Sophie’s choir goes on a field trip to Italy, for which J.J. will do duty as a chaperone. (There are a lot of shots of Venice and Rome which, while pretty, have that impersonal “second unit” feel.) The trip quickly ensnares the characters in a plot to nuke the Vatican.There are agreeable moments, but also many labored ones, as when Kristen Schaal’s data analyst character advises Sophie on what to do when she starts kissing boys, telling her to “use your tongue like a cleaner shrimp in a shark’s mouth.” (When speculating on what the Vatican’s Wi-Fi password might be, Schall actually lands real laughs.) But too often this muddled movie, which never really settles on a tone, plays its espionage plot points with a dour seriousness that’s at odds with a teen comedy.My Spy the Eternal CityRated PG-13 for language, themes and violence. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. Watch on Amazon Prime Video. More

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    ‘No Fear, No Die’: Claire Denis’s Noir Comes Home to Roost

    The French filmmaker’s confident third feature has been largely overlooked. Thankfully, a newly restored version is getting its first New York run since 1992.Most celebrated for “Beau Travail,” her sensuous transposition of Herman Melville’s “Billy Budd” to an African outpost of France’s Foreign Legion, Claire Denis could be the strongest French filmmaker of the post-New Wave generation. She is certainly the greatest risk-taker — unafraid to eroticize her male actors, unleash outré violence, or subsume an elusive narrative in a fiercely lyrical force field.“No Fear, No Die,” made nearly a decade before “Beau Travail,” does all three. Newly restored, the film is now at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, its first New York run since 1992. Few revivals are more deserving.Introduced when Denis was still relatively unknown, as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Eurobeat: Blacks in European Cinema,” the movie was well received at the time. (Caryn James’s New York Times review in 1992 called it “exquisite in its own tough-minded way.”) Still, even as Denis’s stature has grown, her confident third feature has been largely overlooked.“No Fear, No Die” might be described as doubly noir. Set in a sketchy demimonde, it takes its epigraph from the sometime crime writer Chester Himes’s memoir “My Life of Absurdity”: “Every human being, whatever his race, nationality, religion or politics, is capable of anything and everything.” The main characters are two former colonial subjects. Dah (Isaach de Bankolé, featured in several Denis films, including her first “Chocolat”) is from Benin; his partner Jocelyn (Alex Descas) from Martinique.The action is largely confined to a glorified truck stop disco in a dingy Paris suburb. The club’s shady white owner Pierre (Jean-Claude Brialy) plans to use the joint as an arena for cockfights. The sport is illegal in France, if not Martinique, where Pierre formerly lived and, as he makes abundantly clear, enjoyed the favors of Jocelyn’s mother.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    What Fancams Get Right About Our Love of Movies (and Stars)

    When I first saw “Anatomy of a Fall” back at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023, I expected that the courtroom drama would be critically acclaimed. I could even imagine an Oscar win. What I did not foresee was the fancams.These vertical video edits of clips focus on a celebrity or character, usually set to pop music. If you want to nitpick, you can also call them fan edits, especially if they involve multiple people onscreen. The fancam phenomenon grew out of the world of K-pop, where enthusiasts often make videos focusing solely on one member of a large band.These days, my feeds are full of film and TV fancams, which I have come to love and seek out. But perhaps the most notable one was from last year and focused on Swann Arlaud in his role as the defense attorney Vincent Renzi in “Anatomy of a Fall.” Set to Rina Sawayama’s song “Comme Des Garçons (Like the Boys),” he runs his fingers through his hair, he lights a cigarette, he stares intensely, he sighs. The music is timed to begin on the lyric “I’m so confident,” thus signaling that Vincent is a bit of a badass. Suddenly, through a savvy bit of editing, a character actor in a serious French drama got the same treatment as a pop heartthrob.There are other “Anatomy of a Fall” fancams, including ones dedicated to Sandra Hüller, who plays the author on trial for the death of her husband, and the sassy prosecutor trying to convict her. But there’s something, dare I say, brilliant about the Arlaud fancam. For one, it’s a little subversive in the way it applies the language of pop music to art cinema. It’s also just an example of good editing in the way it matches Arlaud’s glances and movements to the beat of the song, the lyrics of which further present him as a swaggering star — with a touch of irony, given that he’s a humble, often stressed-out lawyer in the context of the movie.The best fancams have at least some of these qualities. They feature clever, surprising uses of music, highlight films or stars you wouldn’t necessarily expect to get this kind of treatment, and are energetically put together. In that way, the fancam itself has become its own art form and a great platform for cinephiles to show their ardent devotion.The Parisian creator of the Arlaud fancam, who goes by @ginafancam and asked not to share her full name, told me over email: “It’s my way to pay tribute to the film. Some prefer to tell their love of cinema by writing a review, for example, but I prefer to do it by editing.” She added that she was happy that her creation “encouraged people from all over the world to watch a French auteur film.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More